He adds, “To assume otherwise is to put blinders on.” This is according to Bob Gourley, who was the chief technology officer at the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] from 2005 to 2008 and is the founder of Cognitio, a cybersecurity consulting firm. (Bloomberg News, 3/18/2015)

Bloomberg News reports, “According to publicly available information, whoever administrated [Clinton’s private server] didn’t enable what’s called a Sender Policy Framework, or SPF, a simple setting that would prevent hackers sending emails that appear to be from clintonemail.com. SPF is a basic and highly recommended security precaution for people who set up their own servers.”

Bob Gourley, who was the chief technology officer at the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] and is the founder of his own cybersecurity consulting firm, says: “If [an SPF] was not in use, [hackers] could send an email that looks like it comes from her to, say, the ambassador of France that says, ‘leave the back door open to the residence a package is coming.’ Or a malicious person could send an email to a foreign dignitary meant to cause an international incident or confuse US foreign policy.” This also would have made it easy for hackers to launch “spear phishing” attacks from Clinton’s account. Other government officials could have thought they were getting a real email from Clinton and then be tricked into having their own accounts breached.

Clinton’s spokesperson claims there is no evidence her account was ever successfully exploited in this manner. But Bloomberg News points out, “The problem with such confidence is that if hackers exploited the SPF vulnerability, Clinton’s office would likely never have known her domain name…was being used surreptitiously.” (Bloomberg News, 3/18/2015)

Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill claims that when Clinton set up her private email server, “Robust protections were put in place and additional upgrades and techniques were employed over time as they became available. There was never evidence of a breach, nor any unauthorized intrusions.”

However, Merrill declines to say who exactly was in charge of maintaining the server and ensuring its security. Furthermore, it’s unclear what sort of security vetting that person or persons received, if any. Additionally, Merrill won’t reveal if other departments that protect government communications, such as the FBI or the NSA, were ever told of the server’s existence, and if so, if they helped provide security for it.

James A. Lewis, who held senior technology posts at the White House and State Department, comments that emails “that run on commercial services are vulnerable to collection. […] I don’t think people realize how much of this information is available to foreign intelligence services.” (Bloomberg News, 3/18/2015)

Contrary to Merrill’s claim, a May 2016 State Department inspector general report will reveal that there were hacker attacks on Clinton’s server.